This invention relates to real-time information access and more particularly to methods for accessing telephone-call-related information in an automatic call distribution (ACD) system wherein dynamic real-time information is queried in real time without having been stored previously in a static or mass storage data structure. This invention relates more particularly to elements of such systems for optimally routing incoming calls. Automatic call distributors provide automatic routing of incoming telephone calls in conjunction with a private switchboard or Private Branch Exchange (PBX) equipment through caller responses to prompts. An ACD is frequently used by relatively large companies to screen calls as part of telephone-based support for services to remote users or for routing requests regarding products or services for sale.
A significant requirement of an ACD system is a need for continuous and substantially real-time system operation and availability of access to data. In the ACD system of interest, to minimize the adverse impact of failure of key hardware, the system configuration includes extensive redundancy.
In the past, known ACD systems have not had the ability to flexibly query real-time data from shared memory. Flexible query mechanisms are those which enable end users to define at the user interface level what specific data should be retrieved. Flexible querying has generally been limited to interaction with historic data from static databases which have been stored on mass storage devices. Access to real-time data in shared memory has in the past been limited to fixed query presentations provided by the manufacturer. Thus, in past real-time data collection systems used in ACDs, real-time data, which is of immediate and important interest and which is constantly in flux, was not accessible through flexible query mechanisms. Part of the problem is the conventional requirement for transfer of large amounts of data to and from mass storage devices and the delays associated with those transfers.
In some prior ACD systems, end-user requests directed at so-called real-time data have generally required retrieval of entire files of data, although only a small subset of a large set of data might be needed to satisfy the end-user requests. However, the request and query procedures of other known ACD systems have conventionally required retrieval of large sets of data before relevant information could be examined and/or displayed. An example in a dedicated outbound dialing system is found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,101,425, issued Mar. 31, 1992, wherein a client system gets data from a host, processes the data at the client and selects a subset of data at the client to display. Other representative ACD systems are provided by AT&T (integrated into a PBX) and Rockwell International (a standalone ACD system).
In addition, in some prior ACD systems, additional delays were introduced in transferring data representative of status information from a central database server (a host server at a call center) to remote reporting stations (multiple client systems at a local site or remote sites) in order to minimize adverse impact on the performance of the central database server due to limitations in both processor load handling capacity and in data transfer rate (bandwidth) capacity of communication links between sites. What is needed is a data creation and data query technique in an ACD system in which the integrity of the data as displayed is maintained continuously, and in substantially real time without adversely impacting performance of the underlying background processes.